Evelyn Kuck joined the residents at Pecan Grove on October 13th. Carol Wagie and Dorthy Lehman brought her down from Ohio, and stayed a few days. She’s adjusting to the new lifestyle. We’re sure glad to have her with us. The pictures below show Evelyn with Crystal and Carol, and with Doris.
We’ve had a lot of volunteer help this month, allowing the regular staff to get to conventions. We’re sure glad for all the help. Things are just getting back to normal with the staff schedule and we’re looking forward to having the workers return.
The pecan harvest hasn’t gone well. A drought in the summer ruined part of the crop. Then we had hundreds of crows who proved to be a lot smarter than we are. They cleaned out the first type of pecans (called Pawnees) to come in. After that loss we got “poppers” which use propane to make a sound like a shotgun at regular intervals. These seem to have kept the crows away. But the squirrels and deer ignore them. There are some more pecans to be harvested, mainly “Desirables”. We hope to harvest them on Saturday. Even then, we’ll have far less pecans than last year, which was a disaster because of hurricane Ike! Oh well… we didn’t buy the farm for pecans anyway!
The pictures below show a “popper” and some pecans with their husks just coming off, ready for harvest.
These pictures show the pecan orchard and the tractor being used to shake a pecan tree. We have a machine that will pick pecans up off the ground (which would avoid using the tarp) but the orchard is so wet it just gets full of mud.
Finally, for those with a mechanical background, when a shaft key goes missing on a pecan cleaner, persons of a certain neck color can find a solution!
Ken